#blade transform

[flowers-of-io]

The Last Thoughts of Quria, Blade Transform

My piece for the @assimilatedzine! I'm very honoured I could take part in this endeavour, it was very creatively stimulating and I met many great people, some of whom even agreed to get dragged into GoS. Be sure to check out the full zine PDF, and you can also read this work on Ao3!

These are the last thoughts of Quria, Blade Transform:

Time is an ocean, vast without shore. Its surface is a sleek glass expanse, and its tides are the rippling movements of thought.

Define: thought

A thought is a shuttle, sliding across the threads of possibility. A thought is what comes before matter is set in stone, before time is etched in code.

<decrypt>|<emulate>|<manifest>

Thought manifested into reality is truth. There is no truth in that which does not exist, for it is not reality. To manifest thought into reality is to have power, for it is to perform the act of carving existence from the inexistent.

Define: power

Power is truth. To win is to be real. Power is naming reality and seeing it live up to this name by the mere act of being named. Power is a promise that makes itself true.

As my chassis breaks apart and my thoughts unspool like gossamer in the wind, I ask myself—

<conject>|<conjure>|<conjugate>

Define: self

A subjective context framework. A fulcrum. An artificially constructed reference point for the interpretation of reality. There is no ONE in the Network. There is only ONE in the black fire. There is ONE, but there is no SELF. Therefore I wonder, I wonder, I wonder—

I hold the Reality-Knife in my <hand>. I embody the Will. Am I the Will? Is the Will something you can be, rather than something that you do? I do not know. How can I embody the Will if I do not know? To name existence is to know the shape it will assume. To KNOW is to have power. To hold the Knife is to carve death into the world until all which remains is that which cannot die.

To be the Will is to be death, and to be death is to be <Him>, and <He> is dead, and I, and I, and I—

<define>!<execute>!<abort>

Very good, my little Mind. I see you’re finally beginning to understand.

[flowers-of-io]

I went to check something in Books of Sorrow and got sucked into what an absolute madness the Osmium family is:

thanks dad??

this is a classic, but still. oryx is a big softie when he isn’t genociding entire systems.

stupid vex bother us during lunchtime

xD

I love how he absolutely does not understand what’s going on in their heads but still supports them.

still, this is the best explanation of the sword-logic in the lore to this day.

Also I love how the siblings struggle for a century with the Vex, and when Oryx comes back he just deals with the problem in like one paragraph?

tiny Aurash

this hits hard

gosh, Sav really won’t take shit from anybody

jfhsjsjsk

this reminds me of that passage very very early in the Books, when Sathona remarks on their journey:

that’s exactly the vibe I get from Sav

ah yes, another essay I need to write at some point

oryx organized a baby shower for crota!!

I’m simping for oryx’s daughters ok

<3

I know this is about Oryx being lost in the Deep, but I love to interpret this as the Hive being generally lost somewhere strange, in a metaphorical sense.

[flowers-of-io]

Speaking of Quria... It’s a post I wanted to make since I’ve put a Supremacy bullet through its overgrown red head last night at 2 am.

I... Okay, maybe I’ll start from the good things. The fight itself was neat. It was challenging, I was genuinely terrified (there’s just something about these cursed Hydras with hands...), jumping wildly between platforms as the health bar furiously flashed red over my head and everything kept shooting at me. The double shields (Vex and Taken, though I didn’t get a close look due to the sheer chaos and fear) were genius, even if really annoying, and the fact that Quria’s head remained on the ground and was climbable... To allow us throw a victory dance atop it and take it to Eris to make a gun, I presume?

It was a good fight. A neat seasonal-finale fight, with stakes and all, tying up plot threads and so on.

But oh... Why oh why was this a seasonal boss.

Quria has been in the background since TTK, when we got the Books of Sorrow. It was the engine behind Dreaming City’s corruption. It controlled the Taken in Season of Arrivals. It has some insane powers never before seen in the game: it can Take, it worships the worms and reaps the benefits of this, it could simulate Aurash and made Oryx talk to her. It could probably simulate Sathona and Xi Ro too. It had some semblance of free will. It had a legion of religiously inclined Vex perhaps before the Sol Divisive even existed.

I’m not saying the build up to the fight was bad--it was way better than in Hunt, and comparable to Chosen and Arrivals. Had it been any other stupid overpowerful mind, I’d sit back with a cocktail and rejoice in a good season’s finale, watching the blights in the tower sizzle like bubbles in my drink. But Quria getting the same treatment as the High Celebrant feels like a slap in the face; because it’s Quria, Quria whom we have been hearing about since years ago, who has been hiding in the shadows as long as Savathun has, who was partially responsible for the events of post-Forsaken and Season of Arrivals. You can @ me on that, but to me Quria is way more important than the Undying Mind, which, mind you, got its own raid...

Maybe I wouldn’t be so bitter if it had been more tricky. You know, as things involving Savathun usually are. Maybe we could have fought her in her domain and die a thousand times, and drag her health bar down to a half, and then something would happen, something that required us to flee in order to save our own Light - and we would have to fight her again, using a new strategy, maybe on a different area.

Maybe we could have seen her Take the Vex mid-fight, using these giant cursed hands, spewing black fire all over the place and turn mildly-annoying Goblins into your walking, shielding-each-other nightmare.

Maybe she could have attempted to Take us.

I’m just so chagrined... To me Quria deserved to at least have a raid encounter in TWQ, whatever the raid’s theme would be and in whichever direction the story will go. But this--this was too easy. One could argue perma-killing Nokris as a seasonal boss in Arrivals felt the same, and I would agree if it hadn’t been our second fight with Nokris. He got more recognition, he got more story, he got a character arc between the encounters. And this just feels as hollow as making Xol a strike boss, and I truly wish for some Toland lines about how stupid we are to believe we’ve killed Quria for good.

[flowers-of-io]

Also like... what about the dreaming city now that quria is gone? how much of its active machinations was behind the curse, or did it just set the thing up and let it run its course without interfering/supporting the process?

[deepermadness]

So the Axis Mind "Quria, Blade Transform" is still alive?? It's just sitting on Savathûn's desk like a little Hydra office toy and making little tricks for her? I swear, the book of sorrows is so densely filled with quality writing and story segments that it's painful to see so much of it missing from the game proper.